Dr. Maurice Jackson teaches in the History Department and is affiliated professor in the Black studies and music departments (Jazz). Before coming to academia he worked as a longshoreman, shipyard rigger, construction worker and community organizer. He is the author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism. He is co-editor with Jackie Bacon of African-Americans and the Haitian Revolution and co-editor with Susan Kozel of Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754-1808. Author of many articles he is co-editor of a special issue on jazz in DC in Washington History (April 2014). His article  “Washington, DC: From the Founding of a Slaveholding Capital to a Center of Abolitionism,” appeared recently. Jackson wrote the liner notes to the two jazz CDs by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones, Steal Away: Spirituals, Folk Songs and Hymns and Come Sunday. He has recently lectured in France, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, Puerto Rico, and Qatar. A 2009 inductee into the Washington, DC Hall of Fame, he was appointed by the mayor and the Council of the District of Columbia as the first chair of the DC Commission on African American Affairs (2013-2016). He was a member of the Georgetown University Slavery Working Group that made recommendations about how the university must atone for its slave past. In 2017 he presented a report  “An Analysis: African American Employment, Population & Housing Trends in Washington, DC” to the mayor and elected leaders of the DC government. 

Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality appears in February 2025 (Georgetown University Press). With Blair Ruble he co-edited DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC (2018). 

Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African Americans in Washington, DC will be published by Duke University Press in 2025-26. His chapter “Music is the Message” will appear in Musical Capital: Sound and Power in Washington, DC in 2025-26 (Harvard University Press). Oceanic Circularities: Mobile People and Connected Places in the Indian Ocean co-edited with Rogaia Abusharaf and Udah Chandra is to be published by Georgetown University Press in 2025-26. Jackson will soon begin work on Michael Shiner: A Black Man in a 19th Century White City.